Adventure Magazine, December 10, 1924 — page 47: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Blond Spiders plan and what the enemy would do, leaped sidewise and down. For all of a minute or two he remained there, convinced that he was completely hidden in the jungle. Bar squawks of disturbed parrots nothing happened. The hum and twitter of the forest settled down to normal. Presently two round, small eyes in a red face rose cautiously and peered through the inter- stices. The lips moved eloquently. The head rose still higher until he could see clear into the arbor. An oath lurid and lewd enough to shock the morals of the forest beasts preceded an elephantine spring toward the tree, where, still rumbling curses, he stood glaring about him. The expression of balked greed and wounded vanity was so comic that both the silent watchers nearly choked with sup- pressed laughter. The seeking ape eyes caught sight of the belt. The non-thinking reaction was a grab like a starving monkey at a nut. Then at the feel of the softness within a ludicrous expression of dreadful anguish shot into the eyes as with frantic fingers Sawyer tore open the belt. Literally bellowing with rage, he flung the coveted belt on to the ground and stamped on it, glaring madly about as he did so, mouthing incoherent curses. Then with an oath he turned and plunged out of the hole. There followed a guttural command to halt, the vicious crack of a Mauser, a cry and the cessation of the crashing of bushes. VII <eam) AN OATH preceded commands in aH German. Following on the trodden trail into the arbor, there appeared a short, thick-set man with a blond beard in a patched uniform, a Mauser pistol in his hand. Behind the officer were two rank- ers, cadaverous of features, and several black soldiers. be ‘_—— growled the blond beard in German, “There are no more of the En- glish pigs. Ach, that one has left his ha a Another white came up behind him and saluted. “What shall be done with the prisoner, Excellenz? He is wounded in the leg and unconscious.” 25 “Good! Take him to the rest house. Is the tall one wounded or dead?”’ “Dead, Excellenz. His companion seems to have killed him with his fist. He is a strong one, that. Undoubtedly they quar- reled, yet neither has any diamonds.” “Good. Perhaps Ahrenburg shot the other pigs if there were any, but he must be court martialed for letting these enter the valley. Throw this pork into the jungle. It is a pity, for he would have been perhaps a good specimen for the Herr Doktor. Go. I want my lunch.”’ They stamped away in the direction of the hut. “See?”’? whispered Plessons. ‘They haven’t tumbled that we’re here.” “So much the better. Sawyer must have struck Bodiker mighty hard!” ‘“‘Them sparklers have driven him clean mad. I say, gov’nor, that bloke’s the Kommandant von Muhlhauser himself. Pretty foxy cove he useter be. We chaised him from hole ter hole, but we never fahnd this plaice.” “How d’you know?” “Lumme, I wus scaht and I useter crawl frough their lines,” returned Plessons as if that were nothing in particular. ‘“‘We’d better be getting a move on,”’ said Tony. “Yus. Maike fer the hill and work along between the spiders and the forest.” Thus they did, almost noiselessly gliding through the fringe of the jungle until they reckoned that they were far enough away to discard caution. Steep going they found among the broken, forest-covered débris at the base of the escarpment, and as hot as a boiler room of a liner in the Red Sea. On their passage they saw no spoor of game; no sign of life of any sort except birds, lizards, snakes and insects. Mosquitoes, even before the sun set, attacked them in clouds. The Mbwa (dog) fly, which flies no higher than a big dog, chewed their wrists and ankles. The false twilight of the hid- den valley had begun before they caught sight of the settlement, the lights of which they had seen the previous night. The site was on a small plateau at the base of one of the volcanoes, the ground run- ning up from light jungle to scrub where about a hundred feet higher glowed the spider belt, which evidently formed a band at the same altitude right around the land- locked valley. On examination through CoMmichool Wh) C© 5}